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Responding to Change

September 15th, 2009 | Roadmaps, Strategy

ChangeI swear I have written half a dozen posts in my head in the past week, either while driving or walking. I really need to learn to channel my inner Winston Churchill diction skills. Alas those ideas are lost for now.

Over the past month I have been mentally wrestling with change. Death, taxes and change are about the only things guaranteed. With respect to change, you can be guaranteed change will happen and will affect something.

Change can and will come from market conditions, sales, marketing, customers, executives, support, engineering and many more sources. Change can and will affect everything including revenue, cost, project plans, feasibility, roadmaps and many more.

As product mangers, every day you have to deal with change. Every day you have to deal with the effect of that change on your product. The successful product managers, the ones who cope with change the best, are the ones with a sound strategy that reduces the risk of change and/or enables them to respond to the change.

Image Source: Center for Educational Technologies
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    • BstnMelody
      Totally agree! To take that one step further, I think the ones that cope with change the best are the ones that have thought about possible changes in advance, and defined how they might deal with that change. Not necessarily defining the solution, but the method to get to that solution.
    • True. The best strategies map out what success will look like. To be able to effectively articulate success statement you will need to review all risks and assumptions and plan appropriately.
    • Agreed. I think good Product Managers are like boat captains. Before the leave the harbor, they know where they should land, and a good path to get there. But they cannot possibly know of all variables that await them. Eventually, they'll deliver the goods to the right port, but they'll have to overcome and address the unexpected along the way. The only constant in our field is "change" (well...that and meetings!)
    • Great analogy.
    • philayres
      And IMHO, 'change' is the thing that makes product management interesting! Otherwise all the other stuff that goes with it could just make you crazy...
    • Ha!
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